Dinesh Chandimal rates India series whitewash as the worst of his career

A dejected Sri Lankan skipper Dinesh Chandimal has branded the recent 0-3 Test series drubbing against India as the worst of his career. However, the 27-year-old has also accepted complete responsibility for his side’s performance in the series, while lauding the Indian side for their consistency.

Sri Lanka suffered a humiliating whitewash against India in the recently concluded Test series which further underlined how much the Island nation has regressed in cricketing terms in the recent past. And this point was further emphasized by Sri Lankan skipper Dinesh Chandimal as he told reporters, “This was the toughest series in eight years playing international cricket, no doubt,” and added, “The reason is that we were not able to take the games to five days. The previous two were four-day Tests, and this was a three-day Test. Since I’ve been in this team, this is the worst series loss I’ve experienced.”

The home side were outplayed in every department of the game as Sri Lanka failed to mount a challenge in any of the three Tests as they suffered one batting collapse after the other while the Indian batsmen feasted on Sri Lanka's ordinary bowling attack scoring 600-plus totals in each of the first two Tests. This also resulted in none of the three Tests lasting the full five days as India secured their first ever away series whitewash with ease and Chandimal acknowledged this fact saying, “We were not able to take the games to five days. I am disappointed that if we could have dragged the game to the fifth day we could have learned something, but losing within two and half days you cannot give any excuses,” and added, “As an opener, you should at least bat for 15 to 20 overs. As I said, we gave some game plan to each and every player. They have to execute them when in the middle. We failed to do that in the series and that cost us dearly I would say.”

However, a lot of Sri Lanka's failures with the bat can be attributed to Chandimal's own failures at the crease as the skipper failed to lead his side from the front with the bat in the series and he took complete responsibility for the same saying, “As a captain, I would like to take the responsibility. The fans have always supported us. They encourage us always. Today we saw despite losing, people applauding us. That is what the team needs now. We cannot let the players be mentally down. We are doing the process right. We might not get results soon, but we are confident that the future looks good.”

Heading into the series, Chandimal had famously said that his side had a plan for each Indian player, but the way things turned out, it didn’t seem to be the case as India wrapped up the series 3-0. However, the 27-year-old remained defiant about his said words while adding his side had failed as a result of poor execution.

“During training, we are doing a lot of hard work. We had some game plan and we spoke so many things during the game. As a player when you have to go to the middle you have to put them to practice. That was what the batsmen were unable to do. As players, we had to stand up and do our performances well.”